All posts tagged Korea

Ambassadors from the U.S., Japan and Russia talk about Korean reunification on Friday in Seoul

While Japan struggles to cope with the aftermath of the March 11 quake and tsunami and the ensuing nuclear crisis, long-standing diplomatic concerns are still being discussed.

Ambassadors from three of South Korea’s neighbors, including Japan, spoke Friday at a conference marking the 20th anniversary of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded think tank associated with the Ministry of Unification, which deals with North Korea-related matters.

Muto Masatoshi, Japan Ambassador to South Korea, said the reunification of the Korean peninsula would be of great benefit to Japan because of the stability it would bring to the region as well as business opportunities.

What’s next for Japan? Ken Courtis, a former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs in Asia, and a lecturer at Keio University and Tokyo University in Japan, outlined a few key points in an email to The Wall Street Journal. Edited excerpts:

Politics: “Already the government has been very weak going into this vast catastrophe. Will the parties now be able to overcome their deep differences? The government has not yet even managed to pass the regular, annual budget for 2011, let alone a new and major supplementary budget to finance the rebuilding of the vast devastation along the Tohoku coast.

“At best, there will be an hiatus in political infighting. And Japan has seldom produced the best in the last few decades.” Read More »

Joint naval drills in the Yellow Sea by South Korea and the U.S. this week took on special significance, coming just days after a deadly attack on a small South Korean island by North Korea.

Now it’s Japan’s turn to show off its close military ties with the U.S.

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will conduct large-scale joint military exercises with the U.S. between Dec. 3 and 10, sending numerous ships and aircrafts out into the waters and airspace surrounding Japan. According to the SDF, some 34,100 troops from Japan will participate in the drills, along with 10,400 from the U.S.

The two nations have held nine similar events since 1986, but this time, Tokyo is particularly keen to play it up. In the 50th anniversary year of the U.S.-Japan security alliance, it wants to underline how important the tie is – an idea it has a hard time selling to some in the population.

In Okinawa, the opposition to U.S. bases has soared to levels not seen in many years, threatening to derail a key plan to relocate a U.S. base on the island. This has been a huge strain on the otherwise friendly bilateral relations, and damaged the reputation of the Democratic Party of Japan.

Meanwhile, Japan is facing renewed territorial disputes with China and Russia, and China’s swelling naval capability in the Western Pacific is something that keeps many Japanese policy makers and defense experts up at night.

JRT has learned that some events of the drills will be open to the media coverage. So stay tuned…

Joint naval drills in the Yellow Sea by South Korea and the U.S. this week took on special significance, coming just days after a deadly attack on a small South Korean island by North Korea.

EPA

After the U.S. and South Korea held joint naval drills this week in the Yellow Sea, Japan and the U.S. will conduct joint exercises next week.

Now it’s Japan’s turn to show off its close military ties with the U.S.

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will conduct large-scale joint military exercises with the U.S. between Dec. 3 and 10, sending numerous ships and aircrafts out into the waters and airspace surrounding Japan. According to the SDF, some 34,100 troops from Japan will participate in the drills, along with 10,400 from the U.S. Read More »

Tourists peek at North Korea through binoculars in Paju near the demilitarized zone. Japanese travel agencies have canceled sightseeing stops to the DMZ, while several businesses have halted all travel to Korea amid rising tensions on the peninsula.

Travel agency JTB Corp. on Thursday canceled sightseeing tours to the edge of the buffer zone that cuts across at the 38th parallel separating the two Koreas for the second consecutive day. The giant travel agency said it will decide whether to resume the tours to the demilitarized strip, also known as the DMZ, on a daily basis. JTB spokesman Yasoji Kato said roughly 4,500 Japanese tourists visit South Korea at any given time. The DMZ is not a part of the regular tour package and requires an extra fee. Mr. Kato said not many Japanese tourists opt in, but he declined to disclose how many make the trek to one of the world’s most heavily militarized borders. Read More »

When an American visitor walks into one of Japan’s sprawling electronics stores, they are often disappointed that the products on sale in the TV aisle don’t look much different than the ones on display at the local Best Buy.

LG

LG trumpeted its return to the Japanese TV market with a full-page ad in the Nikkei newspaper featuring up-and-coming Japanese actor Osamu Mukai.

But there is one major difference: you won’t find any Korean TV brands in Japanese stores. That means the two biggest global television makers are not represented in one of the world’s biggest television markets.

That will change later this month when South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc., the second-largest TV maker by revenue, attempts to reenter the Japanese market with a line-up of 10 different LCD TV models ranging in sizes from 22 inches to 55 inches. LG trumpeted its return to the Japanese TV market with a full-page ad in the Nikkei newspaper.

The color spread features up-and-coming Japanese actor Osamu Mukai staring longingly at a LG television and then it asks: “TV or LGTV?”

LG stopped selling TVs in Japan in 2008 after a three-year failed attempt at trying to break into the market. LG executives said it is taking a second shot after carefully studying the needs of finicky Japanese consumers. Meanwhile TV market leader Samsung Electronics Co. said it has never sold TVs here. Read More »

South Korea’s pop group Girls’ Generation meets reporters at the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Monday, Nov. 1.

It was unusually long introduction.

Members of Girls’ Generation, Korea’s most popular girl group (at the moment), introduced themselves in four languages – Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese – at a news conference for foreign reporters to announce an international strategy.

And with eight of the group’s nine members present, it took awhile to get started. “We are really focusing on languages these days because we want to be able to connect with our foreign fans and audience,” said Tiffany, a Korean-American. Continue reading at Korea Real Time.Read More »

Christmas will come early for some middle-aged Japanese ladies who count themselves among the fans of Korean celebrity Bae Yong Joon, more lovingly known as Yon-sama.

Getty Images

Bae Yong Joon talking with the press in September 2009.

The bespectacled actor has invited 600 fans to a Tokyo Dome photo session in December, according to Japanese media reports. Yon-sama admirers will also be allowed to snap their own pictures of Mr. Bae during the official photo shoot.

The event is part of the “Message to Asia” charity show organized by Japan’s DATV, a channel that specializes in broadcasting pop culture from other parts of Asia. DATV was unavailable for comment at the time of publication. Read More »

SEOUL — The antisubmarine exercise that the South Korea and U.S. militaries are conducting this week is being publicized so heavily here that it seems that the only thing being left unsaid is precisely where it’s happening.

Associated Press

A South Korean child sits on an U.S. flag during a rally against South Korea and U.S. joint exercises near the U.S. embassy in Seoul.

And that’s not because the two countries are trying to keep it a secret. It’s because they both have different names for the sea they’re in.

Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense, found himself the target of critical media coverage in South Korea two weeks ago after he announced at a briefing in Washington that most of the exercise would take place in the Sea of Japan.

On the Korean peninsula, the water between the Koreas and Japan is called the East Sea. (The water between the Koreas and China is called the West Sea, but fewer complain in South Korea about the Yellow Sea moniker that China and other countries use.) The controversy is a familiar one to international news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, who routinely hear from people in both South Korea and Japan depending on which name for the water is put above the other. Read More »

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan will unveil Thursday afternoon its “manifesto” of promises for next month’s national elections.

It is likely to be a document markedly different from the one the party released in advance of its landslide victory in last year’s campaign — a platform that the party found impractical in government, and vexed leaders who ended up breaking one pledge after another. Now comes the older, wiser DPJ.

Reuters

Protesters demonstrate against U.S. bases in Okinawa.

As Prime Minister Naoto Kan tries to steer the party back to the people’s heart, he and his brain trust are expected to backtrack or soften the party’s stance on a range of major issues that include U.S.-Japan relations, fiscal policy and social welfare programs. The party’s last manifesto , in August 2009, was issued in the midst of campaigning for the historic lower house election that swept the longtime opposition party to its throne — and brought the DPJ to power for the first time.

Now one prime minister and eight months of experience as the ruling party later, Mr. Kan and his cohorts are angling their position so that manifesto a la Kan reads more like a realistic menu of government pledges rather than a transcript lifted from a beauty pageant. Read More »

About Japan Real Time

Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com